Star Trek and the Trekkies: An Outside View

(Here I make my stand on what I think about Star Trek, and how my experiences with other science fiction series colored my impression of it. Needless to say, I'm sure this post will ruffle many Trekkies out there, but I just had to come out and talk about how I felt about this.)

As a fan of science fiction in general, I am often recommended to watch the old and revered science fiction series, “Star Trek”. Many friends of mine, ranging from classmates, to gaming-friends, to even my professors at school, love the TV series and recommend it to me. Since they often spot me with Star Wars, Transformers, Halo, or Gundam paraphernalia, they figure me for a science fiction man, and with me often talking about science fiction games in public with my friends, they want me to go see Star Trek and see what my reaction to it will be.

And to be honest, my opinion is rather……..mixed. There’s parts of it I like, there’s parts of it that I do see as having artistic merit, but there’s also parts where I had to scratch my head and ask: “how was this popular?” After having seen enough of Star Trek to make a judgement of the series as a whole, I’d say it’s a mixed bag. There’s great ideas being tossed around there, great acting and action here and there, but unlike something like Star Wars, where George Lucas keeps a constant level of quality between the action and the story-telling, the quality and artistic value is all over the place.

There will be times where I’m genuinely impressed, times when I feel a meh-ish feeling towards the work, and times when I either laugh or scream at the stupidity I see. They have great ideas, but sometimes the execution feels flat. There’s great characters and drama, but it seems like the reset button and the restrictions they place on the story keeps the potential from going all the way through. Star Trek, for me, would score a 7.5 out of 10, because the greatness and potential I see gets dented by the stupid decisions and messages they try to peddle, especially for a science fiction show.

On the visuals, I’m not that impressed. When it comes to battle scenes and action, I’ve seen better. Yes, I understand they were on a shoestring budget, and the ways they cut corners were necessary to keep the show going, but to me, it’s better to have few, but well-done action scenes, rather than many action and battle scenes that are mediocre and/or sloppy. Game of Thrones, for example, is one such example of the former. For a show about medieval battles and contenders for the throne jockeying for power, they have very few actual battles. But the few battles that they do have are well-performed, and in between them, the actors have a chance to shine with dialogue and conspiracies. The shots of brutality done in the show doesn’t always happen on the battlefield, and they know their limits on what can and can’t be done as a battle.

I’d also say it’s because I’ve seen a lot better done by other series. Even the battles from the original Star Wars was more well-done compared to most Trek battle scenes. I suppose Paramount should have hired George Lucas to do the action scenes. Considering that he supposedly was once a Trekkie, he might have done it, so long as they advertise his stuff or have a crossover with Star Wars or Indiana Jones(perhaps via the holodeck with the latter). The advent of anime, 3-D video games, and other forms of sci-fi entertainment perhaps soured my view on a show that mostly relies on technobabble to solve things. Even Gundam, which I’d say is a very technobabble-heavy series, still relies upon a healthy dose of well-done action scenes that isn’t too reliant on technobabble. Part of what endears me to science fiction are all the cool, awesome battles they have. And seeing Star Trek’s battles and comparing them to even some of the early 80’s cartoons I saw of Transformers and Gundam, let alone the Original Trilogy Star Wars, well, it’s not even a contest.

The main characters are also a point of contention. While I had no problems with the Original Series Trek crew, I did have some with the Next Gen and Voyager crews. Kirk was the standard hero, who takes lives and saving the day as a higher priority over protocol, he’s the kind of guy who saves the day and gets the girl, and I had no problems there. But with Jean-Luc Picard, especially-I had a problem with. It’s not that I don’t appreciate a more cultured hero who isn’t the standard young man archetype-I’d welcome a subversion of that. I’m the kind of guy who likes Qui-Gon Jin, after all, and that guy was anything BUT the standard young hero. But the concepts behind Picard and the execution are two different things, and while I like the former, I am not a fan of the latter.

I liked the concept behind Picard. The idea of this Eighteenth-Century diplomat-soldier being the prime representative of humanity seems more in line with what a galactic human society would choose to represent its best. A hothead like Kirk might do something rash and embarrass himself in front of the other galactic races, but someone like Picard, who seems to be more experienced and well-versed in history and the art of warfare would suit the job of a flagship captain better, especially if he’s doubling as both a frontline commander AND a diplomat who deals in politics. However, it’s when he opens his mouth that I start slamming my head on a table. How do I put Picard’s logic? Let’s just say that Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars is smarter and more logical than him, and Palpatine is a crazy maniac who literally follows a cult that preaches betrayal and the quest to attain power at all costs.

Picard’s dogged adherence to the Prime Directive is quite baffling to me, especially when the PD was the kind of rule Kirk broke on a regular basis to save lives. The Prime Directive, or Starfleet’s General Order #1, is the order given to Starfleet commanders not to interfere with pre-warp civilizations and cultures. It makes sense in a certain context, to not bully those who are beneath you, but if those species are in danger due to any kind of threat or factor, then the gloves are off. Kirk would rather break it than see the loss of life. Why do Picard and the other Starfleet commanders have such moral dilemmas when the Prime Directive stands between them and saving a bunch of primitives or indigenous folk? Yes, there’s the argument that they may be adversely affected by interacting with the Federation, but any other hero, from any other sci-fi, on any other time, would choose to save people rather than doom them. Why to Trek heroes have such problems overriding the PD? Is it their religion? Do the captains and first officers have chips in their brains telling them not to break it? Can someone clue me in on how standard protocol suddenly became a religious tenet?

Even the Empire from Star Wars might save people in danger of being destroyed, if only so they can call favors and services from the people they saved. For example, in the Star Wars Expanded Universe, the Empire saved the Noghri, a warrior people adept at assassination. Granted, the Empire’s way of saving them was a half-ass attempt at fixing their world, but it was still there, and in exchange, the Noghri assassinated people for the Empire under the banner of Darth Vader. They switch loyalties to the Rebels later on, after Vader died, when they sensed that the main heroes, Luke and Leia, were Vader’s children, and therefore, his heirs to their loyalty. But this case shows how even the evil Empire is willing to stick its neck out for people in trouble, if only so they can get those people as servants.

Picard’s justification for his religious attachment to the Prime Directive is that historically, any time a more advanced culture came across a less advanced one, it always ended with the latter’s genocide. As someone who studied the history of the Spanish Empire and how it devoured Indian Empires, I can attest that not all primitive cultures are destroyed by contact with more advanced ones. In fact, sometimes they benefitted. The Indian tribes that the Spanish allied with to destroy the Aztecs and Incas certainly did benefit-they not only destroyed their hated rivals with the blessing and backing of a foreign power, but they also benefitted from the technology brought over by the foreigners as well. Guns and horses-things that frightened the Aztecs-became available to tribes like the Tlaxcalans thanks to their assistance to the Spanish crown. During the conquest, the pro-Spanish Indians threw parties alongside Spaniards after the downfall of the mighty Aztec and Incan Empires.

Of course, this doesn’t count the time when Picard broke the Prime Directive himself. While Picard would enforce treaties and things like the Prime Directive, even yelling at people who saved lives while ignoring it, Picard will break the PD whenever HE feels like it. The whole situation with Star Trek: Insurrection was him interfering with a plan made by the Feds and another race to help harness a planet’s natural powers, which would give them many miraculous cures and breakthroughs for science. Picard interfered because a Ba’Ku refugee, whose people illegally settled on the planet, fell in love with Picard, and his little affair caused him to intervene against another race in dire need of a cure because they had some kind of terminal illness. So while Picard will put up a wall and defend the Prime Directive, bellowing out at others who save lives while ignoring it, he has no problem breaking it himself.

And of course, no 90’s show would be complete without a rejection and demonization of capitalism. Picard babbles on to people who ask about wealth and money that the Federation has eliminated the need for it, that people have all they need to live, and that money, and the greed that went with it, is extinct in the world of the Federation. Everyone does what they do and lay down their lives because they want to. Outside of the logistical problems that “no money” would bring, it is such a fantastical concept that even I have a hard time buying the realism of the Trek world.

Almost none of the other science fiction series I watch on a regular basis has this idea, because whether they want to have massive epic battles between good versus evil, (Star Wars, Transformers) or they want to portray a realistic sci-fi world in the future with real-life problems (Mass Effect 1, Gundam) or something in between (Halo, Starcraft) they all still need a form of measuring wealth and worth, and currency does that. Not to mention that demonizing the search for more wealth is akin to hating a man for breathing-creatures naturally want more wealth, security, and power to secure their lives and live in peace, or pursue whatever passions they have. Realistically, if technology has eliminated that pursuit, then you either have a bunch of drones slaving for the guys up-top, or you’ll have a society where everyone spends all day eating, having sex, and lounging around in a holodeck, because basic needs are no longer a problem, and they just eat replicated food for a living. Why bother trying to discover new aliens when you can create new aliens with your holodeck at your whim?

So yeah, I did have problems with Picard. And every captain that followed him. The fact that they were so blinded by Federation dogma-well, I don’t know if it sickens me or if it makes me laugh. Compare it to say, Mass Effect, and both iterations of paragon and renegade for the main character, Shepard, will save people if they are in danger. Paragon Shepard would try to talk things out and come up with a peaceful solution. Renegade Shepard will kill a few to save the many, sometimes without hesitation. If even the Empire from Star Wars has no problems saving the endangered for the sake of a couple of new servants, the Trek captains’ dogged insistence on the Prime Directive makes Palpatine’s “enlightened” despotism look sane by comparison. Hey, at least he never broke his own codes. He wants to keep peace and order in the galaxy, and he’ll crack open anyone’s head for trying to break that peace. Simple, isn’t it?

Another point of contention I have is with the bad guys. The Klingons and the Borg don’t seem to be too threatening for me, and the Cardassians and the Romulans are even less threatening. The Klingons, while they look the part of a threatening enemy, have this obsession with honor that seems to border on the ridiculous. They use honor-duels to upstage their superiors, but this can happen even in the middle of a battle. That’s something even the Sith would rarely do, since most of their back-stabbing happens behind the scenes. The Mandalorians, on the other hand, do it in a battle circle-again, outside of a real battle. The Decepticons from Transformers also have such power-plays, but usually in secret, and if such backstabbing becomes public, the offenders, usually consisting of Starscream and whatever poor saps he suckered into his plans, get punished.

Brazen power plays in the middle of a battle can cost the Klingons said battle and perhaps even the war, as soldiers who trust one commander might not trust the one who kills him. That’s exactly what cost the Zeon forces from the original Gundam series the war-Admiral Kycilia Zabi shot and killed her brother, Admiral Gihren Zabi, in the middle of the biggest battle of the war at space fortress A Baoa Qu, because she found out that he secretly had their father killed. Right after that, Gihren’s men, correctly assuming that Kycilia killed him, pulled back and ran away, causing the remaining Zeon forces to be overrun by the Earth Federation forces. As for the Klingons, I highly find it puzzling that such an enemy, who have this obsession with battle and war, would have a powerful, practical army and stand as a threat to the Federation. While technically, a smarter lieutenant can displace an incompetent general using the system of “Klingon promotion”, as it came to be called, the reverse can also happen: a wise and pragmatic leader can get killed by a power-hungry, glory-seeking incompetent who will lose them the battle, and perhaps, the war.

I’ve seen this happen in my studies of Byzantine history: an incompetent Emperor can be overthrown by a general who would know how to handle the Empire, but at the same time, a wise ruler can get killed by a power-hungry upstart seeking to advance his position. That’s how Byzantium was sacked by the Fourth Crusade: an Emperor allied with the Crusaders was killed, and his successor and killer took the throne and attacked the Crusaders. The Crusaders struck back, sacking the city and damaging the Empire to the point of no return. By adapting the same system, the Klingons are digging their own graves.

Not to mention that their ships don’t look as menacing. I understand that this was back then when sci-fi was very early, and they were experimenting with ideas, but one reason why the Imperial Star Destroyers gave such an impression to the public when they first appeared in the Star Wars films was because they looked the part of being the heralds of a ruthless Empire. The humongous size, the long shape, the loud noises that its turbolasers gave off when they fired, (Both Star Wars and Star Trek haven’t yet figured that space is a vacuum with no sound) gave the audience the impression that these were warships of a powerful Empire that meant business. Similarly, the Protoss Carriers from Starcraft introduced themselves in the opening scene of the first game by dwarfing a small scavenger ship before blasting it into bits-an obvious warning to the gamers who popped in the disc into their PCs for the first time that these mighty war vessels were products of a civilization that was not to be trifled with.

The Klingon ships looked the part of hunter vessels, and that would have been fine-for pirates and freelancers. For an empire? They’re gonna need something bigger than those birds of prey to impress the other Empires I’ve seen in science fiction. The Imperial Star Destroyers were just that-destroyers. Fast attack ships. If those Imperial Command Ships like the Executor-class Dreadnought from Episode V showed its face to the Klingons, they might not even need to open fire to pound the Klingons into submission. They could just ram right through the Klingon fleet and the only damage they’d incur would be skid marks on the plating.

And of course, we get to the Borg. The Borg seems to be a kind of Swiss-Army Knife for Trek debaters to talk about a race that can conquer anything. A mechanoid-cyborg race that assimilates everything it comes across, the Borg are able to “adapt” to any situation and counter whatever is being thrown at them while absorbing and consuming any race they see would be a good addition to their Collective. At first glance, they seemed to be threatening, but to me, again, I’ve seen better. The main threat of the Borg seems to lie more on the concept and technobabble they posses rather than the actual execution-Borg drones look like one of the most sloppiest enemy soldiers I’ve ever seen. Imperial Stormtroopers were more threatening, and those guys lost to a bunch of teddy bears. The way the Borg drones clumsily walk around to assimilate their next victim or tank whatever’s thrown at them makes them less intimidating than most enemy soldiers I’ve seen in sci-fi. But the threat of losing one’s soul to a machine conscience that can adapt to any situation or tech you throw at it seems to be their primary appeal. Too bad it too gets countered by technobabble instead of some novel way that prevents them from using technology as a counter.

For my money, the Dark Side of the Force is a better antagonistic power than the Borg. Instead of sucking your soul away into a lifeless collective, the Dark Side is brimming with life-brimming with hate, anger, fear, and every dark feeling people keep inside their hearts while pretending to be angels in public. The Dark Side doesn’t need to use clumsy-looking cyber-men to ensnare you, since it already exists within you, in a way-only waiting to be released out into the world in a whirlwind of psychic energy and hate. It whispers to you: whispers that all your problems will go away, and all its power shall be yours, if you just give in. That sweet, psychotic temptation to throw away your social inhibitions and force society-nay, reality-to bow down to your will. All the power in the universe, the power to kill with a gesture without touching the enemy, the power to blast them with psychic energy and lightning, the power to create and take life, and manipulate the forces of the universe for your own whims, all waiting for you on the other side. It’s like a crack-dealer, except instead of dealing with drugs, the guy offers you power at the cost of your health and sanity.

And the effects of the Dark Side are far more insidious than any mechanical infestation-we see Sith like Emperor Palpatine go from decent-looking normal folks into raging psychopathic monsters once they get drunk with the power of the Dark Side. Dooku and Darth Vader killing people with merely a hand gesture mimicking a choking action. Darth Maul fighting with hate in his heart, knocking around two Jedi as if they were amateurs. And the expanded universe of Star Wars makes it even worse: Darth Nihilus devouring whole planets’ worth of life energy with the Dark Side, the Sith Emperor playing god with life and possessing numerous bodies and granting great power through the Dark Side, it makes the Borg and their little machines look dated by comparison. Who’s the more threatening: a guy who can tank most of your attacks until you find the chink in his armor, or a guy who can kill you with a stare and a hand gesture?

Even the Borg’s schtick of being an alien race that assimilates others isn’t something that they own the market on when it comes to the scare factor: the Zerg from Starcraft could easily beat them there. Like the Borg, the Zerg seek to assimilate races into their collective, or as they call it, their “Swarm”. Unlike the Borg, however, they only devour the races they deem to be fit for their collective. Anything else gets destroyed-they only want the best of the best. And unlike the Borg, which seem to only want to widen their Collective with some kind of broad mandate, the Swarm has an actual purpose-perfection.

The Zerg leader, the Overmind, is a brain-like entity that controls the Zerg Swarm through viceroys called Cerebrates. The swarms are controlled by the Cerebrates, unable to override the orders of their superiors, and the Cerebrates cannot override the orders of the Overmind. And the Overmind seeks to create the perfect life form, by taking the swarm’s “purity of essence”-the one-ness of its race and its incredible healing factor-and combining it with a race that has “purity of form”, a quality that gives universal psionic power and longevity throughout the race. Only then would he have control over a perfect life form, having the Zerg’s natural strength and healing powers, with immense psychic powers and longevity to back it up.

And as luck would have it, there is such a race with “purity of form”-the Protoss. Both the Zerg and the Protoss were made by the same progenitor race, the Xel’Naga, and while they gave the Zerg “purity of essence”, they gave the Protoss “purity of form”. The Overmind wants to assimilate the Protoss into the swarm to create the perfect life form, a hybrid of the Zerg’s natural adaptation and healing powers with the Protoss’ longevity and immense psychic powers. However, none of the races in the Overmind’s swarms are strong enough to help the Zerg assimilate the Protoss. Which, of course, explains why the Zerg are attacking the humans. The humans in the Starcraft universe are beginning to develop psychic powers of their own, and the Overmind wishes to harness that energy and employ it against the Protoss so he can overwhelm them and bring them into the fold. This gives a solid explanation as to why an advanced alien race would bother trying to assimilate a bunch of meat-bag peons like the humans-both the Borg and the Overmind are far ahead of the humans one way or another, but the Overmind has an actual reason to go all Taco Bell on humanity, while the Borg just want to absorb every race they run across because that’s their schtick-even if the humans are far below them in technological prowess.

Not to mention the fact that the Zerg look the part of a frightening alien race that’s come to eat us all for dinner. While the Borg look like extras from a Halloween party riding around in giant floating cubes and spheres, the Zerg resemble a mix of insectoid, mammalian, and reptilian horrors mixed together in different races. Each baring fangs, claws, and natural blades, capable of withstanding even large spike rifles wielded by power-armored human space marines and energy blades and cannons wielded by the Protoss warriors. Some shoot spikes at the enemy, some impale them on spikes, some fire acid bombs, some rend the enemy’s flesh with their claws, others use massive blade-arms. Some even feast on their fellow Zerg to restore their energy and chuck spores around that damage the enemy. Some even serve as snipers, hitting the enemy from afar with a parasite that kills them and spawns broodlings from their corpses. While the Borg look like Halloween extras that got lost, the Zerg look like a freak horror show gone mad, striking fear into the hearts of the enemy before even engaging them.

And then there’s the factor of the Borg’s ships. Again, I appreciate that they were going for an alien design that didn’t attend to human ideas, but the whole “floating squares in space” doesn’t exactly scream “threatening warships” for me. They seem to be more like space debris cut into cubes and sent floating into space. Again, I get the idea-they were trying to be surreal, trying to describe an alien race sending ships into the void of space. But there’s something unrealistic about the Borg Cubes that doesn’t spread to the massive Zerg Leviathans that transport the swarms across space. The Leviathans at least resembled creatures that could easily be construed as having flight capabilities, while the Borg design just seems irrational, having almost no front or back. It’s a big turn-off when facing them off against ships of other science fiction universes. Almost as if it was something a child would come up with.

Quite ironically, when Trekkies attack Star Wars fans or fans of other science fiction series for being childish, it’s their own series that comes off as something a kid would write, with the constant demonization of capitalism combined with ships that a kid would come up with. I suppose the Borg Spheres were a minor improvement, but not by much, at least from my standards. Imperial Star Destroyers look threatening. Protoss Carriers looked elegant. Covenant warships combined the aspects of the previous two to create something threatening AND elegant. I just can’t think of a Trek ship that captures the essence of these other ships from other series.

As for the Cardassians, the Dominion, and the Romulans, they barely left a mark for me. Their designs are practically too standard and cliche for me to even count them as unique when even Star Wars alone has many antagonistic species and factions like the Ancient Sith, the Yuuzhan Vong, the Mandalorians, let alone species from other series like the Sangheili and Jiralhanae from Halo, the Protoss from Starcraft, or even the Space Pirates from Metroid. The Cardassians and the Romulans just seemed to be more antagonistic forces for the writers of Trek to pull out whenever they needed someone to be the enemy that aren’t Klingons or Borg.

Another complaint I have with the show is its use of science-or rather, its misuse of science. Star Trek tends to handle battles and dilemmas through technobabble, and while technobabble has its place in a science fiction show, Star Trek, from TNG onwards, has a disturbing trend of abusing it. And what’s worse is that the fans actually act like the science is realistic, when all they do is use a word salad of tech terms to make the problem go away. There is even a site called the “Star Trek Failure Generator” which pokes fun at how Star Trek uses technobabble by having problems identified with random science babble be solved by a solution that is also comprised of random science babble. I think it practically climaxed with the Borg, an enemy whose whole schtick is technobabble adaptation. Quite fitting for a series that abuses technobabble to have its greatest foe be a faction that overly relies on technobabble as its weapon.

Other science series use technobabble either as a story plot point or a minor fix. Like for example, in Star Wars Episode V, one way to stop the Imperials from shooting down escaping Rebel starships is by giving the Rebels a technobabble gun, or in this case, an ion cannon, that disables Star Destroyers in a few shots. Or, like how in the original Gundam cartoon, they talk about how the protagonists’ warship, White Base, can get better protection if they fly through a canyon because the “Minovsky Particles” that act as a barrier for the ship bounce off the canyon walls and create a stronger shield above the ship, preventing attacks from above from being feasible. A brilliant use of technobabble was in Star Fox Assault, where the good guys realize that the Borg-like Aparoid species that they were fighting all had cells made for apoptosis, also known as programmed self-destruction, so they decided that they were going to make a viral weapon that forces the Aparoid Queen to issue the apoptosis command to the entire species, causing the entire Aparoid Empire to self-destruct once Fox McCloud succeeded in firing the virus into the Queen and stopping her from making an antibody. So, not only did the makers of Star Fox Assault use technobabble in a brilliant way to end the threat, they also referenced real-life science when they cited apoptosis as programmed cell death and invoked that as a solution. THAT is how one uses technobabble well; mixing real science with fantasy science and creating a realistic connection between the two. Not random science babble put together. At this rate, “Treknobabble” is practically space magic used to get rid of problems, except instead of chanting words for a spell, they chant random science babble to make the problem go away.

Metroid Prime had a brilliant use of technobabble-it has the protagonist, Samus Aran, uses different frequencies of scanners as well as different types of beam weapons against the enemy. Samus had an x-ray scanner and a thermal scanner, as well as a regular energy/power beam, an incinerator plasma beam, a freeze beam, and an electric-style wave beam. Some enemies die faster to one type of beam than the other. Some die faster when hit with cold attacks, others die faster when incinerated, and mechanical enemies go haywire when hit with the electric wave beam. Several Space Pirate soldiers adapt their armors to be immune against a type of weapon, so Samus has to pull out another kind of weapon to shoot them down. The final boss itself, the so-called Metroid Prime, invokes this, as sometimes it will be vulnerable to the power beam, then the wave beam, then the freeze beam, then the plasma beam. Its final form keeps cloaking itself one way or another, and while cloaked, it can be seen with a thermal visor at one point, then later, it cloaks itself from thermal vision and has to be seen with an x-ray visor. It alternates between different versions of cloaks that keeps Samus changing her visors in order to keep up with it. The use of technobabble here was far more than the regular plot device, but it added a sense of complexity to the fight, as well as give the audience the sci-fi feel for it as the enemy forces Samus to use different technologies to win.

The way Star Trek uses technobabble is, as I said, a magic spell to make hostile phenomenon go away. Or as a replacement for tactics, strategy, or thinking outside the box. It comes off as lazy, uninspiring, and predictable, and it makes the sci-fi world feel less real, while at the same time, not actually adding anything fantastical or wondrous about it. It just seems like they’re lazily phoning it in and jumbling together random science babble to solve problems, and the fans who defend this crap have to be some of the most gullible people I have ever seen. At least the fans that see it as a tongue-in-cheek problem and laugh at it have some rational views of it.

Finally, the last problem I had was the Q. Now, I’m not one to balk about overly powerful beings; they have their place. Dragonball has Zeno, a guy who can literally destroy universes on a whim. Star Wars has the Ones who can also destroy universes like Zeno, and overly powerful Sith like Nihilus and Vitiate, who devour the life forces of whole worlds. Halo has the titular rings being galactic death machines that can kill all organic life in the galaxy at the flick of a switch. Basically, a powerful character can set a theme or tone for the show that few things could. What caught people’s attention about Darth Vader that differentiated him from the many villains that ran around wearing fancy masks and threads? The fact that the man almost choked another guy to death with psychic powers and a hand gesture. What made people jump up and realize that Vegeta from the Dragon Ball Z anime was a threat? The fact that the son of a gun blew up a planet on his way to earth. With two fingers and a hand gesture. The Transformers movie introduces its main antagonist, Unicron, a powerful world-destroying robot, and the first thing he does? Eats a whole planet while the people were still on it in the movie’s intro scene. A powerful character can be a boon to a story, one to raise the stakes, set the tone, perhaps add a certain flavor to a show or series by upping the ante and providing a character that was beyond the constraints of a regular human being, and forcing the heroes who are under those constraints to deal with or evolve while fighting this foe.

But the Q, to me, represent one of the biggest wastes of potential out there. Not that there weren’t good episodes with the Q, heck, my favorite was in the episode “Q Who” when Q brought the Borg to Picard as a way to humble him. But creating this godlike character and having him be more like a giddy genie waiting for Picard to slip or poking the crew for reactions felt…….petty at best. A godlike being would be more above that sort of thing. Q seems to give in to his petty desires in interfering with the Enterprise crew way too much to be taken seriously as an otherworldly force. I remember a quote from Mass Effect 2’s cut content when the robot character Legion was made to face a delirious, drug-addled alien who believed himself to be a god: “the first thing a god masters is itself”. At least when someone like, say, Beerus the Destroyer, from Dragon Ball Super, interacts with the main character Goku, it’s because the God of Destruction is interested in something Goku can bring that Beerus can’t usually get, whether it be the delicious foods from Goku’s Earth, or a sparring partner for him to fight. Beerus has limits to his power, and this puny mortal has something that can solve that, whether it be Beerus’ quest to have a great fight or his quest to find some food that doesn’t leave him with a bad taste.

But Q has absolutely nothing to gain from the Enterprise crew. He has no set limits that forces him to seek their help outside of the times when he loses his powers thanks to the rest of the Q Continuum getting pissy with him. If he wanted to have a crew like the Enterprise crew, can he not just threaten them in a way that forces them to accept him? Or make his own versions of Picard and the Enterprise ship and crew, only much more evolved and improved? I mean, later, in other series such as Voyager, Q even tries to SEDUCE Captain Kathryn Janeway, even taunting her with the words “my cosmic clock is ticking”. WHY? Why would a being like Q even need Janeway? If she says yes, then I could understand, but when Janeway continuously rebuffs him, what’s stopping Q from making another Janeway with similar characteristics as the original, but one that will say yes to Q? It’s stories like these that make Q less of a powerful being and more like a smarmy genie or troll. And why is it that Picard and his gang are trying to extract promises from Q? Why the hell is a starship captain trying to extract promises from a deity? You don’t see Blackbeard laying down terms for Poseidon to follow. Shouldn’t things be the other way around? Shouldn’t Q be the one laying down terms and Picard being forced to follow them?

Beerus from Dragonball lives in a universe where most of the food from the planets he visits are either so-so or total garbage, to the point where he blows up planets for having such crappy offerings. So Bulma, Goku, and the other earthlings from Dragonball have that token to bargain with him, when the planet they live in is the only place that he can get a decent gourmet. Unicron in the original Transformers film has a weakness in the Matrix of Leadership, hence why he needs others like Megatron to destroy it for him and even revives him as Galvatron to help finish the job. Q has no such limits. If he wants to amuse himself, he can create copies of the Enterprise ship and crew, or, if he wants to force Picard to act in a certain way, he can threaten to alter or destroy something Picard holds dear (like sending the Federation spacedock into the sun) until the captain capitulates and agrees. The fact that the Enterprise crew deal with Q in such an irreverent way despite having no way of stopping him conventionally takes me out of the drama considering how unreal it is that an all-powerful character would be limited in such a way. And don’t bring up the whole “he can’t interfere too much” part, otherwise, the other Q would have shut him down for good long ago for continually bothering Federation captains.

Picard also comes off as rather pompous or arrogant when it comes to dealing with Q. Other captains from other science fictions would either see Q as a massive threat or an asset to exploit, and given that Q can and will act in predictable patterns when exposed to the right stimuli, they would either try to placate Q to make him go away, or act in a way that would make Q an ally. I especially remember the episodes “Q Who” and “Hide and Q”, because they show how nonsensical Picard’s way of dealing with Q was. In “Hide and Q”,  Picard gives the titular being a monologue about how humans are like angels and gods, citing a quote from Hamlet without the irony:

Picard: Oh, I know Hamlet. And what he might say with irony, I say with conviction: "What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action, how like an angel! In apprehension, how like a god!"
Q: Surely, you don't see your species like that, do you?
Picard: I see us one day becoming that, Q. Is that what concerns you?

Knowing what mankind did in the previous few centuries, Picard comes off as a bloody ignoramus, pompous and arrogant. Especially when in a neighboring reality, the humans formed the Terran Empire, a brutal fascist government that was the United Federation of Planets’ dark counterpart, an Empire where the humans rule with brutality and repression. And in the same episode, they find some refugees, and a dying girl that they could not save. Is that really a species that is like an angel or a god, Picard? One that has the potential to be callous and brutal, but unable to save lives? This dilemma is further compounded by the fact that Q offered his powers to Picard’s second-in-command, Commander Riiker, in that same episode, and they note that Riiker could have saved the girl with a snap of his fingers. But he chose not to because PICARD ORDERED HIM NOT TO. What kind of logic does that make? A godlike being comes around, plays with your crew, but then blesses one of them with reality-warping powers, and you come upon an emergency, and you order the man NOT TO USE HIS GIFTS TO SAVE LIVES? I’d hate to quote someone from Star Wars here, in a Star Trek piece no less, but I think, in this situation, it’s quite warranted:

“Ezra, you were given your gift for one reason: to use it!”
Darth Maul, Star Wars Rebels, Season 2, Twilight of the Apprentice

That is why I think that Picard makes less sense than Darth Sidious from Star Wars. Even an evil Sith would have given in to his emotions at that point and saved that girl. Heck, one of the reasons for Vader turning to the Dark Side was because he wanted to save his woman from dying. And yet here we have Picard, the same guy who just told a reality-warping being that humans are like angels and gods, telling another man that he was right not to save someone, because “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. A nice little quote, but one that does not reflect reality. There have been figures in power with absolute power in places like government, and not all of them were corrupted absolutely by it. Some, like Charles V of Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, used it sparingly, showing mercy to enemies that he could have easily slaughtered. Others, like Frederick II of Prussia and Peter the Great of Russia, tried to use it responsibly, to improve society. There were those like Philip II of Spain who tried to use absolute power to preserve what he saw was his birthright, and there were those like Louis XVI of France, who were overwhelmed with the responsibility and did not fully abuse it-the latter’s downfall was due to him not using the power enough as the country sputtered into an economic crisis. Not everyone with absolute power goes nuts. Riiker could have saved the girl, and then gone back to using his power sparingly to fix the odd problem that technobabble can’t.

And of course, in “Q Who”, once again, Q offers his powers to Picard and says that he wants to join the Enterprise crew. He says that the Federation is expanding a tad bit too far and there are threats out there that the Federation isn’t ready for, so he wants to volunteer to be their guide and protector. Now, any other starship captain, from any other science fiction series, would have probably seen this as a boon. A powerful being with abilities that can alter reality shows up, warns you about the dangers from a rather far-off region of space, and he offers to guide you through it and help protect you from the dangers you might encounter. Heck, almost any other protagonist would have taken Q up on that offer, from Han Solo, to Amuro Ray, to Master Chief and Optimus Prime. A powerful being shows up on my ship and offers to help guide and protect me and my crew as we go through a strange part of space? Count me in!

Picard…….spurns Q.

Let me say that again.

Picard answers Q’s generous offer, by telling him that they can handle things on their own.

Dear God, this guy is dumber than Jar Jar Binks. At least Jar Jar was well-meaning when he encouraged the Senate to give Chancellor Palpatine emergency powers. He thought there was no other option, and the Chancellor’s yes-man guilt-tripped him to act the way he did. Here, Zeus literally shows up on Picard’s deck, offers to protect him and help, and he spurns the guy.

This of course, leads Q to blast them 7000 lightyears away from friendly space, and into Borg territory.

At first, when they encounter the Borg, they fight somewhat equally, but eventually, the Borg technobabble their way to be able to repel Federation attacks and regenerate damaged parts of the Borg Cube that the Enterprise shot up. The Borg pursue the Enterprise, until Picard finally gives in and Q gets them out of there.

Let us take a second look at the situation, shall we?

Picard could have said yes to Q. Q warned them that the Federation was expanding fast, that there were things out there that they weren’t ready for. He offers to be a member of their team, and even offers to relinquish his powers if they don’t trust him to have them. Picard shoots down the offer anyways, predictably forcing Q to show Picard what the hell he really was up against.

Now, any sane protagonist would have tried to play Q’s game. They would have tried to placate Q. Or at the very least act in a way that makes Q an ally, or act in a way beneficial to them. Even if Q could not be trusted, the last thing a sane man would want would be to provoke him. Picard ignores the dangers, coats his arrogance with the word “conviction”, and goes full-force in provoking the mad god. So the obvious happens-Q shows him how woefully unprepared he is for the dangers beyond friendly space and puts Picard in a situation he couldn’t technobabble his way out of.

In summation, Q comes off as more along the lines of a playful child than a wise, immortal being. Even Emperor Valkorion from Star Wars the Old Republic, who is admittedly a horrible person, speaks with a kind of authority and wisdom that a being that is millennia old would have. Q just comes off as childish, like if he was a kid with his finger on the nuke button. But he does get very good when he acts in a poetic fashion, or when he puts that prideful imbecile Picard in his place. It is Picard’s (and to an extent, Janeway’s) reactions to him that really boils me. It makes them come off as arrogant, unaware of reality, and rather prideful and pompous when they deal with Q. Even when Q offers to be on their team, their answer is to tell him to buzz off. Granted, Q has proven to be a trickster, but at the very least, if the guy offers you a gift, you don’t want that gift horse to bite you. Try to play his game on his terms, and lessen the amount of harm you come across. Try to get on his good side so you can call him for a favor. Later, they do get on friendly terms, but the way Picard acts towards Q earlier on really made me think that he’s not fit to lead even a parade, let alone the crew of the Federation’s top vessel.

THE TREKKIES

And here we come to my main point of contention-the Trekkies. Yes, part of what turned me off Star Trek was having the unfortunate occasion of meeting their fanbase online. And while the older Trekkies who tend to debate about things like philosophy and characters are fine in my book, (heck, I have a teacher who is a close friend, and he is a big TOS fan, and I myself am a fan of SF Debris, and that dude is a massive Trekkie who reviewed a ton of Trek episodes) the younger, or shall we say, “young-at-heart” fans, tend to piss me off more because of their stubbornness, and sometimes, because some of them are immature. Granted, parts of other fandoms tick me off as well. Parts of the Halo fandom that act like the UNSC is stronger than it really is, parts of the Gundam fandom that belittle other franchises and fandoms, parts of the Star Wars fandom who are either massive Karen Traviss Mandalorian fans or huge Original Trilogy freaks who hate everything after Return of the Jedi and slobber over Episode VII, I’ve had my fair share of arguments with each of them. But none of them even come close to the idiocy I had to deal with when talking to a lot of these “Trekkies”.

Let me just start off by saying how stubborn these guys must be. Almost every time, they will keep arguing for weeks, months, even years. Star Wars fans will post for a couple responses, then leave. Halo fans that disagree with me block me and never speak to me again. Gundam fans tend to respond sporadically, and so I never considered any of them to be that much of a challenge or an annoyance. I even have some good conversations with some of them and even enjoy talking with them about how one science fiction would cross over with another, or how one faction might react to another in fiction. But I can never have those talks with Trekkies, unless they’re the seasoned, mature kind, and most Trekkies I came across aren’t. Trekkies, no matter who they cross over with, will talk about how Star Trek is the best, how their factions are the strongest, and how Star Trek influenced the growth of tech and science in real life.

To which I say, bollocks. Star Trek as a series has had varied levels of success and failure. But unlike Star Wars, which had a consistent level of quality and whose “bad episodes” are even good for a laugh or for great battles and world-building, Star Trek as a whole tends to land somewhere between average to somewhat good at best. Yes, there’s moments of triumph for the franchise, but also hours upon hours of boredom and mediocrity. While the “bad” Star Wars films stretch for about a good seven or eight hours, Star Trek has hours upon hours of episodes that range from goofy to ridiculous. I suppose that’s what happens when you stretch a series to run for decades. TOS looked like they were treading on new ground, having fresh ideas. TNG expanded upon what TOS brought to the table, but brought a few worms in the apple as well. But from Voyager to DS9 to Enterprise, I lost the steam to go on. It just seemed like what was good in TOS got lost somewhere between TNG and Voyager, and it seemed like they began to double down on the questionable aspects of TNG moving forward, from technobabble to a religious view of the Prime Directive, something that the original series wasn’t much a big partaker of. Hence why I respect TOS the most.

And then we get to the part where Trekkies compare Trek technology and factions to other science fiction series, and they tend to act like Star Trek is superior to everything. Now, I’m a self-admitted Star Wars fan who loves the living hell out of the Galactic Empire, but even that has its limits. If the Empire fought the Forerunners from Halo, they will have problems, especially when the Forerunners start firing off Halo Array weapons and wiping out whole sectors of the galaxy with them. The Covenant from Halo and the Protoss from Starcraft can give them a good fight that could leave the Empire rather damaged or vulnerable after the Empire wipes them out, considering that both the Protoss and the Covenant have the kind of firepower to turn worlds into glass like the Empire does, and the average Protoss soldier wanders into battle with one energy blade in each arm and wear armor and shielding that not even tanks can kill in one shot. Not so sure about Gundam, because they almost never left the Solar System, but the Cybertronians at the height of their power could cause some really serious hurt on the Empire, especially considering the fact that Cybertronians in games like Fall of Cybertron can equip mini-nukes and grenades that create black holes.

However, the Trekkies don’t have that sense of respect for other science fiction shows. It’s always Star Trek Uber Alles. In their minds, Star Trek can defeat Star Wars, Halo, Gundam, Transformers, Starcraft, and whatever other series that comes across. Never mind that the tech manuals for Star Trek and Star Wars posits that Star Trek weaponry has far lower yields than Star Wars weaponry, and that in space, Star Wars weapons cause more damage and create larger explosions upon impacting enemy ships both in the movies and the shows. Never mind that Halo’s factions, from the Covenant to the Forerunners, are so advanced that the former has soldiers walking around with energy shields and the latter can wipe out all life in the galaxy with a switch using Halo or turn people into robots with a single shot from the Composer weapon. It’s all about how the Federation will crush anyone and anything that opposes it from other science fiction shows.

No, the Enterprise firing photon torpedoes on anything solves any of those problems. Never mind that those torpedoes have weak explosive yields in space combat when compared to proton torpedoes or turbolasers from Star Wars, or energy projectors from Covenant ships in Halo. Heck, one Star Trek fan even responded to the idea of the Enterprise fighting Gundams by saying that a photon torpedo will be enough, which shows how massively ignorant they are of Gundams-even in the original series, the Zakus, which are cheap cannon-fodder robots when compared to the original Gundam, can shoot down missiles and torpedoes before they hit their targets, and the Gundam can do the same. The average reaction to missiles for a mobile suit is to step aside and dodge it, then shoot it. Can photon torpedoes really kill these things when they’re liable to dodge and shoot those torpedoes before they hit anything?

Not to mention that they sell photon torpedoes as weapons stronger than nukes-with an episode of DS9 even having massive nuclear explosions when they hit a planet. Yet in space combat, the photon torpedo explodes for less than half a mile. Turbolasers and proton torpedoes have larger explosions, and the Mobile Suit Gundam: 0083 Stardust Memory even showed a Gundam firing a nuke-a single nuke-that explodes and engulfs a whole fleet of warships in a parade formation. So by that metric, not only are photon torpedoes inconsistent, but Gundams would actually curbstomp the Federation warships. Gundams can dodge beam weapons like phasers all the time-in fact, again, a Zaku ace pilot was dodging beam weapons in the first few episodes of the Gundam cartoons. They can shoot photon torpedoes mid-flight. They have beam weapons that fire massive energy blasts that have more explosive yields in space than phasers and photon torpedoes.

As for Star Wars, the industrial capacity of the Empire alone will fluster the Borg. Each Star Destroyer has a core that's practically a tiny sun. Each turbolaser shoots 200 gigaton shots or more. And each ISD costs more than the annual GDP of an entire planetary civilization. And the Empire has 25,000 of these things. The Borg won't be able to stop something that strong. And the ISDs are their fast attack ships-those are just destroyers, which in modern parlance are quick strike vessels. The Empire's real heavy hitters are those 19 KM command ships that have more than 12 times the firepower of a standard ISD, not to mention cost. To counter that firepower, the Borg have to build something stronger than an ISD, one that can take its attacks, absorb it, and fire back with similar force. And with all the planets the Borg own, they cannot have the industrial capacity to counter that. Also, to those who doubt that SW turbolasers can turn whole planets into barren deserts, take a good look at Mandalore. That used to be a verdant jungle world, and by the time of the Clone Wars, it's one big radioactive desert where the people have to live inside glass houses contained in domes. Or, look at Concord Dawn, where a chunk of the planet got blown off. And that was done with warships weaker than the Venator-class Star Destroyers, let alone Imperial-Class Star Destroyers.

Forget the Death Star, the Borg can't even counter the standard Imperial fleet. Also, ray shields and particle shields will block out any nanoprobes, and the former even disintegrate matter, which was how they can use ray shields to trap solid objects like humans in EPIII.

Also, for those of you who say "THE EXPANDED UNIVERSE IS NO LONGER CANON!" It was during the time of George Lucas, and Lucas even praised the Expanded Universe in the intro to the novel "Splinter of the Mind's Eye". Here's the full text of what he said:

"It wasn't long after I began writing Star Wars that I realized the story was more than a single film could hold. As the saga of the Skywalkers and Jedi Knights unfolded, I began to see it as a tale that could take nine films to tell-three trilogies-and I realized, in making my way through the back story and after story, that I was really setting out to write the middle story.

After Star Wars was released, it became apparent that my story-however many films it took to tell-was only one of thousands that could be told about the characters who inhabit its galaxy. But these were not stories that I was destined to tell. Instead they would spring from the imagination of other writers, inspired by the glimpse of a galaxy that Star Wars provided. Today, it is an amazing, if unexpected legacy of Star Wars that so many gifted writers are contributing new stories to the Saga. This legacy began with Splinter of the Mind's Eye, published less than a year after the release of Star Wars. Written by Alan Dean Foster, a well-known and talented science-fiction author, Splinter was promoted as a further adventure of Luke Skywalker. It hit the bookstores just as I was preparing my own further adventure of Luke in the form of a script entitled The Empire Strikes Back.”
-George Lucas, intro to “Splinter of the Mind’s Eye”
So basically, Mr. Lucas, in his own words to his own fans, and not musing in a private interview, talked about how the Expanded Universe characters were in the same galaxy and saga that the movies were. That whole "alternate universe" shit wasn't referring to the actual universe of Star Wars, but more along the lines of how they were made and in a more metaphorical sense instead of a more literal sense. This makes sense, considering that the Lucasarts' hired canon-keeper during Lucas' tenure, Leland Chee, who managed the canon of Star Wars, had most of the Expanded Universe in C-Canon, which is considered canon unless a specific work got booted out. From the mouth of the man himself, Lucas sees the stories of the Expanded Universe as taking place in the same saga, in the same galaxy, as his movies were.
Lucas also referenced the Expanded Universe in his films, from the Jedi Council, the Republic capital Coruscant, and even Palpatine's quest for immortality. Palpatine's quest for immortality had nothing to do with his plot to take over the galaxy, which was the main story of the prequels, yet Lucas placed it there anyways because he was referencing Dark Empire, his FAVORITE Star Wars comic book, where Palpatine finally attains immortality and returns to haunt the heroes. In Dark Empire, Palpatine has immortality, and in Episode III, we see the beginnings of how he attains this immortality.

Also, Disney canon takes everything from the Expanded Universe and turns it up to eleven. Not only is the Empire still as strong as ever, but they made Darth Vader from a flawed Sith into an invincible gore machine.  They took things like the Galaxy Gun and made them even more insanely powerful, such as the Starkiller Base. At this rate, fighting the EU version of the Empire is less risky than fighting the Disney version. A small remnant of the Disneyverse Empire, too poor to afford cloning tanks or monetary incentives for people to breed more soldiers, has a Death Star the size of a planet that consumes suns and blows up whole planetary sectors in one shot.

But no, Trekkies will make one irrational argument after another to try and knock down Star Wars, or whatever franchise they’re debating against. In response as to how the Star Wars ships can fly from one end of the galaxy to another in less than a day, Star Trek fans will talk about how small the Star Wars galaxy is, while even the Disney canon’s statement for size for the galaxy in Star Wars is over 100,000 lightyears in diameter, according to one of the Disney Star Wars novels. (Legends canon says it’s 120,000 lightyears.) They will say that since SW ship weapons don’t create Hiroshima-sized explosions in space, that turbolasers are in no way close to photon torpedoes, even though the explosive yield of a photon torpedo when fired in ship-to-ship combat is nowhere near the same size as well. They will talk about how primitive Star Wars tech is when Star Wars technology could easily solve many of the problems the Star Trek heroes come across, like getting back home to Earth or getting a firepower advantage against the enemies of the Federation. They will say that Star Wars is space fantasy because it has the Force, even though the Force has limits while metaphysical beings like the Q don’t. They will say that the SW tech is unrealistic, while their own show practically uses “Treknobabble” as a Deus Ex Machina so many times that it had become a mainstay of the franchise.

It’s like arguing with someone who curses everyone out for being lewd, while he himself is dressed in a gimp outfit with his member sticking out in the cold breeze. Almost every argument they employ against other series, Star Wars specifically, can be applied to them. They accuse Star Wars ships of being slow, yet their ships’ combat speeds range from flying slower than any starfighter to standing still and waiting to get shot. They accuse other science fiction series of being unrealistic, yet their series’ use of technology practically borders on space magic. They accuse other series of being pseudo-scientific, yet their series is so filled with pseudoscience that the word “Treknobabble” was invented to address that fact. Remember the space magic that occurred in Mass Effect 3’s ending? The one that fans of the series and its science balked at? Imagine that happening at least once or twice every few episodes. Imagine whole battles won by space magic tech without the use of actual space magic like a Force-sensitive. Yeah, it’s quite pathetic, to say the least. Even when the Gundam franchise starts using psychic space magic in the form of Newtypes, it’s still more realistic than 99% of the technobabble Star Trek abuses. It seems that their idea of “scientifically accurate” seems to be informed by how much any series is like Star Trek. The more like Star Trek something is, the more scientific it is, even though Star Trek is the king of pseudo-scientific technobabble. Sure, a few things like the warp drive and phasers might be related to modern scientific theories, but everything else, from technobabble to transporters, is oozing with pseudoscience. It wasn’t like that in TOS, but TNG and Voyager sure as hell were coated with it to the extreme.

In the end, these Trekkies are half the reason I was turned off from Star Trek. I just can’t understand cultishly defending something, even when it has obvious flaws. I can readily accept that parts of Star Wars Legends and the new Disney canon are flawed, I can readily accept that there are things in Halo, Starcraft, Transformers, Metroid, and Gundam that aren’t necessarily realistic, but I’m not as zealous as these Trekkies can be. They’re infuriating, obsessive, unreasonable, and just unable to see the other side’s point of view. I’ve debated Star Wars fans. I’ve debated Halo fans. I’ve debated Gundam fans. I’ve debated even the Warhammer 40K fandom. But the Trekkies really have to take the cake. Their arrogance really does shine a light on how one can be so obsessed over a science fiction series. But even if I were a Trek fan, and someone compared Trek to Star Wars, I’d count the Trek factions as something that the older iterations of the Republic might run into. I, for example, LOVE Knights of the Old Republic and that era of Star Wars. I love the stories, the characters, the ships, the feel of the worlds, and the whole backdrop of what was going on. But if they face against the Empire from the movies, the Old Republic factions, from the Ancient Sith and the eponymous Republic, would get destroyed rather easily. But that doesn’t distract from how I enjoyed Old Republic content.

Yet these Trekkies act as if everything they love and treasure about Star Trek would get destroyed if they lose the tech specs battle with Star Wars. It’s almost as if they have this Napoleon complex when it comes to talking about Star Wars, so they have to keep engaging it, even if their points are so flawed that they’re grasping at straws. They just can’t accept defeat. So they have to keep trumping the point of Star Trek Uber Alles-even though, realistically, a capitalist civilization that encourages competition and improvement for over 1000 generations would have better tech than a socialist civilization that’s barely been in space for a millennia, especially when the former has massive armed companies like Sienar Fleet Systems, the Trade Federation, Czerka Corporation, the Techno Union, and the Banking Clan doing business and competing for customers for centuries, especially when it came to weapons. Competition breeds improvement, improvement breeds strength. That’s why the United States has one of the most powerful militaries in the world. Its strongest competitor? China, which also has a large corporate structure to fund industrial-military complexes. A bunch of space hippies exploring and spending most of their time in the holodecks won’t come close to defeating a powerful military with powerful corporations backing it up. You think the Klingons, the Borg, or the Dominion gave the Federation trouble? The Grand Army of the Republic would run the Federation Starfleet over.

So that’s my main perspective on Star Trek as an outsider. I kinda got interested with some aspects of the show, and certainly, some parts of it interested me, but from the way the show handled itself and its characters, to the annoying as hell fanbase, I just never got into it as much as I have with Halo, Star Wars, Mass Effect, Starcraft, Transformers, Gundam, or any other science fiction that I dipped my toes into. I’ve met some Trekkies who were wonderful people, but many others just turned me off with how annoying they can be, so I lost interest as other science fiction series showed up to pique my interest. In the end, to me, Star Trek is three parts a good idea and two parts annoying, and its rabid fanbase is another reason why I didn’t get invested in it.